‘Kingdom’ flying kicks off the screen
By Matt Braddick
People love to see anything that gets labeled as an “all-star” effort. It allows us to witness teamwork between individual stars who for most of their careers have, in some sense, been playing for opposite teams. There is also a certain mystique to seeing rivals, isn’t there? Equals in any and all disciplines setting aside personal opinions or styles in order to create something larger than themselves; it’s really quite engaging. This idea is especially prevalent in modern professional sports; there’s almost nothing as thrilling as seeing all the biggest home-run hitters or slam dunkers teaming together to put on a fantastic show.
But what do you get when you enter into a discipline where three people completely dominate every popular aspect of the profession? You get something like “The Forbidden Kingdom,” the newly released collaboration between Hollywood martial art extraordinaire Jet Li, Jackie Chan, and fight choreographer maestro Yuen Woo Ping. This fantastical martial arts love-song was certainly long overdue for many fans of the martial arts genre, who have been pleading for an on-screen fight between Li and Chan for years (myself included).
That’s all well and good, but what were the final results? As can be expected, ideas with such popular appeal can become muddled in the Hollywood process, and “The Forbidden Kingdom” suffers from this in a few regards.
For one, the plot is predictably formulaic, and jumps from point A to B to C with a very elementary pace that is as unchallenging as it is derivative: A scrawny, dorky teen from the rough side of Boston suddenly finds himself in a place mirroring that of ancient China, and discovers he may be the one person who can save it all from the rule of a tyrant. Certainly you’ve seen, heard or read this story before, in one form or another.
For another, hoping to copy the success of its predecessors, the ‘mis-en-scene’ of this film, if you can use such a term to describe a popular film like this, borrows heavily from previous fantasy-tinged martial arts pieces in recent memory (I’m thinking “Hero,” also starting Li, or “House of Flying Daggers”). The similarities are all too distracting though, and one ends up wondering if the costumes and set pieces were directly cut and pasted into the film from their original places of origin.
These faults might be enough to drag down any other common film, but “Kingdom” has a few things going for it. Li and Chan are both terribly charismatic, and their on-screen talent has hardly been put to such good use in their careers. Both are an absolute treasure to witness on screen, and are the real attraction even if they themselves are not the protagonist, an honor bestowed upon Michael Angarano (perhaps miscast) of “Snow Angels” and “Lords of Dogtown” fame.
More than being the centerpieces on a stage, dancing their combative dance, both Li and Chan drown themselves in their performances. Conveying more real, believable emotion than Grandpa Bruce could have ever produced, both men don’t exactly put up Oscar-worthy performances, just the best of their careers. Li, often characterized by his stoic acting traits, becomes delightfully animated in his performance as “The Monkey King,” a transformation that might be akin to a kind of reverse progression from that taken by Robin Williams in his leap from “Mork and Mindy” to “Good Will Hunting.”
Another trait in “Kingdom” that helps forgive its shortcomings is its true genre; this is not a martial arts film, but a family film. Devoted, hardcore action fans may be put off by the sometimes silly, perhaps juvenile tone, and may be in for something different than what they expect. All that aside, for what it is, “The Forbidden Kingdom” works quite well as a family film that presents a premise, explains it simply enough for a young audience to understand, and provides a quality, if rehashed, moral ending.
The most notable quality of this movie was how it somehow managed to sprinkle in dashes of inspiration from everything from “The Lord of the Rings” series to “Indiana Jones” while combining the best core parts of “The Neverending Story” and “The Karate Kid.” And like these classics of the family film genre, I have a sneaking suspicion “The Forbidden Kingdom” could perhaps find future audiences in the generations to come, and will hence rest its legacy not on the shoulders of being the first collaboration between Li and Chan, but by solidifying itself as a quality, enjoyable film.
